[PS3] Red Dead Redemption ROM Download

Red Dead Redemption ROM Description

Red Dead Redemption – it’s a sequel to a game that no one ever heard of, but not the sequel to the game that I thought it was. It’s the story of John Marston, an ex-bandit turned farmer being blackmailed by the American government to go hunt down his old friends, or else his family will be “taken care of”.

Story and Characters

The story is probably the high point of the game. First off, because everything in this story seems to be portrayed in a morally complex way. John Marston was once a bandit who’s tried to atone for his mistakes in the past, but he’s been forced into a situation where he must harm his fellow man and old friends of his, but he has to do it for the sake of protecting his family.

On top of that, the American government that’s forcing him into this situation isn’t exactly portrayed in the kindest light either, as while they’re trying to clean up the law, they’re doing it in a really shady manner, which in turn shows that not everything is necessarily black or white, but rather in varying shades of gray, and that feels realistic to life.

I really like that the John Marston character is quite compelling. He seems like a very likable character, and what really surprised me was the fact that while he was once an orphan and a bandit and sort of portrayed as having been in one of the lower rungs of the ladder all his life, he’s a very open-minded, very well spoken, very understanding individual, and that really impressed me. It made him a very compelling and interesting individual.

Unfortunately, many of the other characters in the story are not half as likable as John Marston, and I don’t really have any problem with these characters not being particularly likable. The only real gripe I have with it is that I get sick of having to go back and do other missions with these other story characters that I can’t stand. But at the same time, the fact that I just didn’t like them at all in and of itself made them memorable.

I mean you’ve got a grave digger who also robs from the graves he’s digging, and a sheriff who is probably one of the few likable characters who just, he’s sick of his job but he still does it. I really like the cast of characters. They’re not very likable, but while they’re not likable, they are memorable, and they do add to this story.

Open World Gameplay

Yeah, the biggest problem is while this is a huge open world, there doesn’t seem like all that much stuff to do in Red Dead Redemption. It tries to fill out this void by having random events happen every now and then, but for the most part, there are only three or four that I ran into in my entire playthrough of the game.

It’s usually a guy betting he can shoot more birds out of the sky than I can, or a guy who’s about to get hung and you have to stop the guys who are shooting him, or a damsel in distress sitting in front of a broken wagon which has five bandits behind it, and always five bandits. It feels like there’s very little variation. And in between those random events, there really isn’t all that much stuff to do in this open world.

So in the end, it feels like all you can really do is get off your horse, stand around like a lemon, and wait for a cougar to come and eat you. And quite possibly the most frustrating thing about this is she isn’t even cute! The size does not justify the amount of content, and it tries to be kind of realistic to the time in that it’s a series of small settlements scattered all throughout the desert. And while that is relatively true for the time, that doesn’t justify the sheer lack of stuff to do out in that big open world you’ve created. It makes it boring.

And yes I’m glad we can all agree that the desert sucks and is a barren wasteland, but that’s not an excuse to make your world so bland. And the sheer size of the sandbox coupled with the amount of content ends up creating the same problem Wind Waker had (and no I’m not talking about cell shading – if you think that’s a problem you’re completely missing the point of that game).

No, the big problem Wind Waker had, which is the same one Red Dead Redemption has, is you spend ninety percent of your time in transit, getting from point A to point B to get to the points of interest. Now this does sound like most sandbox games, but at least in stuff like Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto you can at least play bowling for idiots on the sidewalk with your car if you get bored on your way.

If you look at other open-world sandbox games like Spider-Man 2 Crackdown or Just Cause 2, they had the same problem but they turned this problem into the greatest solution. They realized that you’re in this huge world and you’re going to spend most of your time in transit, right? They alleviated this problem by making being in transit an event unto itself.

Spider-Man had very immersive web-slinging mechanics. Crackdown had its just crazy parkour and wall climbing stuff. And Just Cause 2 had grappling hooks and parachutes and carjacking and airplanes – it had so much stuff that it made getting from point A to point B one of the best things about the game. It recognized it had a massive problem and decided to make that its strong point.

However, in Red Dead Redemption, it’d feel like you’re just riding your horse for about 10 minutes with nothing really of interest to see or do. You’re just running around in the desert and that’s just boring. I actually brought this up to someone that I know who really enjoyed this game and they countered my argument by saying “Well there’s a quick travel system – in fact, there’s two! You can either take the train, or you can set up camp and then use an automatic quick travel.”

But my counterpoint is: if you have to use a quick travel system to get to the interesting bits, that’s a tacit admission that your open-world sandbox has failed on a fundamental level. Sandbox games are the most interesting when you can just say “Screw that story mission – I’m gonna go run to the other side of the map and go find some sort of adventure.” But you can’t really do that in Red Dead Redemption because there’s not all that much stuff to do out there. It’s a pretty barren wasteland.

So ultimately, the large sandbox is definitely the lowest point of the game, and doesn’t seem like it made sense to do so. It felt like they did it just because most of their fans were gained through Grand Theft Auto 3 and onwards, so they only knew them as those “sandbox people”, not the people who made Lemmings or Space Station Silicon Valley. And they totally need to make another Space Station Silicon Valley – that game kicked ass!

The point is, it doesn’t feel like the sandbox made sense – they didn’t think it through, or they simply ran out of time putting stuff into it, because it feels very barren and empty.

Combat, Visuals, and Audio

The combat is pretty fun. It takes the form of a third-person shooter, and while I’m not a big fan of the whole “hide behind walls and then just pop up and shoot the carnival ducks as they pop out of cover”, everything works as well as it needs to. In fact, you get a power-up at one point that lets you slow down time, and that makes combat really incredibly simple.

The soundtrack is pretty good. It’s mostly ambient stuff, but occasionally you’ll hear some guitar twang in the background or some whistling on the wind. It’s very minimalist, but it works very well for what it needs to do. There’s never more music than there needs to be, and there’s never all that much music, but it suits the setting quite well, and I honestly don’t think anything else would have worked quite as well as what they did, so thumbs up to the soundtrack.

The visual presentation is quite nice. All the character models are quite crisp and clear, and the animation is quite fluid. I really like how there are so many nice little touches, like if your character walks by another one they’ll react to each other, and there are even added sound clips for your character addressing other random NPCs as they walk around the world. It makes the world feel alive and realistic, and I like that. That’s very immersive.

Replayability and Conclusion

The replayability is found mostly in unlocking new items or weapons. For the most part, it’s just through completing challenges like shooting X number of birds out of the sky or clearing out an enemy stronghold. There’s also stuff centered around a morality system which felt really kind of out of place. It didn’t feel like there was all that much of a reason for it to be there aside from just having an alternate set of unlockables, so I’m not really sure why they did that. But there are a lot of challenges if you’re interested in them. I didn’t find them particularly interesting but they’re there if you want more challenge and more stuff to do in this game, which is good because that was my biggest problem – there just didn’t seem to be enough stuff.

Ultimately, I would recommend Red Dead Redemption. It’s a good game, if only for the story alone and the character of John Marston because I think this is a story that’s worth telling and it’s a story worth playing through to watch. But my biggest question is: why sandbox? I know I’m coming back to this big thing, but this entire game is built around being a sandbox that really feels like it shouldn’t have been.

I think it would have made more sense if each individual township was simply a hub together missions, and then went out onto individual levels to complete them. I think that would have made more sense. It would have made the world feel a little less fluid and real I suppose. Still, there would have been a hell of a lot less running from point A to point B minutia where you’re not doing anything, and that’s the biggest flaw of this game – the fact that it’s a sandbox game that contains more sand than toys to play with, if that makes any sense.

But if you want to see a really well-told story about a really interesting, engaging, relatable character, I would check out Red Dead Redemption. If you’re looking for a crazy mess about sandbox game, you’re not gonna find it here – I would say play Just Cause 3 or Saints Row or something. If you want the best one, SteamBot Chronicles! But if you’re looking for a good story, absolutely grab this one. It’s totally worth it.